Join us on Twitter and IRC (#ludumdare on Afternet.org) for the Theme Announcement!

Thanks everyone for coming out! For the next 3 weeks, we’ll be Playing and Rating the games you created.You NEED ratings to get a score at the end. Play and Rate games to help others find your game.We’ll be announcing Ludum Dare 36’s August date alongside the results.

New Server: Welcome to the New (less expensive) Server! Find any problems? Report them here.

I talked a bit about my entry in the postmortem post, but some people might still feel the lack of a tutorial. With this post, I’ll try to create a sort of manual and strategy guide to the game, that tries to go from the basics to the tricks. First of all, a disclaimer: THE AI IS BROKEN. Yes. Crushed to little pieces by lack of experience. It may stop working or behave strangely (such as attack things far away), but this guide will consider ideal conditions for the game.

The goal of the game is simply profit, and for that you need the income that having planted farms provides, but invaders will try to destroy your farm as it gets bigger.
You start by building a house, to be able to plow land and plant on that. You get gold every five seconds from interest over each plant you have planted (plowed ground doesn’t count), and a bit more when the plant is harvested.
The main mechanic here is to combo the timer with the most plants, so you get more money. Plants cost more to be planted than what they give when harvested. You also increase the income from your farms when you build additional houses.
You can also build towers and fences to protect your farm, because when you get to 6 farmlands, invaders will begin to attack your farm. Towers shoot arrows at them, and fences aggro them the most. When a building is destroyed, you need to clear the debris before being able to build on that spot again. If you lose all your houses, you lose, after all, you get only one farm!

I will probably continue developing this in the upcoming weeks, maybe add different types of plants and even a multiplayer mode! But mainly, a tutorial and/or menu screen.

The good:

Used a familiar engine (Unity, with C#)

Learned new things (namely LINQ and reflection)

Using the new things above, made a really nice layer of abstraction for the game

Thought about the theme a lot when the top themes were revealed

Cleaned up schedule for the weekend

The bad:

Used a commercial tool (SimplePath, for AI), and couldn’t follow my open-source ideal (Though if you want the source, contact me @kroltan)

Didn’t have any experience with the aforementioned tool, using 12 hours to integrate it

I’m terrible at graphics, even worse at sounds (that’s why the game is mute, BTW)

The ugly:

Having this concept from before the LD started, wneh I saw the theme I couldn’t think of a way to fit this idea, so i wasted 6 hours on another game prototype, then came back to the defense strategy idea

Wasting all this time, had to publish my compo-targeted idea as a Jam entry.

Ok, so my game will be about a futuristic(?) sniper who has only one bullet left for his entire mission, however since it’s in the future(!), the bullet can bounce off walls and travels instantly. However, as resourceful future snipers can be, the player also has the ability to send a flying robot to scan the area before doing his job.

Hello again, fellow ludumdarians! I participated on this competition 2 times, and I’m looking forward to the third. However, the start date is very tight this time (school…), and I’ll probably enter the Jam, but I hope I can get in time for Compo. Anyways, I’ll either use Java or Unity3D (probably Unity, I’m used to it) with sounds from BFXR and graphics from Paint.NET and/or Blender. My previous Compos: LD25, LD23 (both open in new tabs).
I wish best of luck to everybody since now!
(and pardon the bad English)

Hello all fellow ludum-darians, since I already finished my entry, it’s time to do a little recap of my achievements and difficulties during the making of this game.

The game is about a ancient monster that defends goats, however, to that he kills anyone that seems dangerous to his protected creatures. For that he is considered a villain between the human society. He spawns wherever goats are in danger, and right now is in a frozen tundra.

In the game you must run towards villagers to bump them to death, so they don’t do the same to your goats.

What went right:

I knew how to fix most bugs

I had the right tools

I chose an idea that was seemingly doable in the period of time I had

I slept well before beginning

What went wrong:

I had so many different ideas for the game, but all impossible in the timeline

I changed ideas about 4 times

I wasted time reading random texts on the web when my brain was “hot” brainstorm-wise

Things to improve:

Again, have a pre-made library for character movement, AI and graphic management.

Projecting instead of doing everything as ideas pop from brain

That’s much it, and again I wish you all good luck, and may your fingers be swift!

This game contains goat-related characters.

The Goatman is a deadly and vengeful villain, few has escaped his horned iron helmet’s pummels. He attacks anyone that dares to harm innocent goats, and for that he is a hero among these. All humans who tried to kill him have never returned.

Warning: This is a really really unfinished version, I still have to add goats and make citizens attack those. Also, add more citizens.

Please feedback on anything, tomorrow I will do the processing of any feedback and add the features above.

*The resolution is stretched because of my Unity workspace setup. The final game will not have this horrid aspect ratio.

I feel much prouder of myself this time than my last, because I got a decent running demo in the first day, in contrast of getting something playable in the last 3 hours of last time and then having to design the level.

Due to the perfectly calculated time zone conversion, LD actually started at midnight here. And my mother still has power on me so I had to sleep. Going to start now, grabbed the Unity 4 and probably going to get a pro trial.